Author: fiercelyindie

January 2018 saw the release of Tort's 11 track debut album 'Ruminate' on Fiercely Indie. Available now on all digital channels incuding iTunes, Spotify.

Tort is a collaboration between Tom Singer and Niall Martin. The duo met at University whilst studying Audio & Music Production.

Ruminate was originally intended as an EP but during the writing process rapidly became an 11 track album. Most of the recording for each track took place in home studios and was later mixed at a professional studio in Plymouth.

A few tracks from the original sessions made it on to Souncloud where they received positive feedback culminating in three tracks being played on the BBC Round Table by 'Pattern Pusher'

On this album Tom takes on the role of vocalist, bassist, guitarist, songwriter and producer. Niall takes on the role of guitarist, pianist, synth player, producer and studio engineer. Both play a huge role within the sound design aspect of the songs (e.g: foley and sound effects). The songwriting aspect is split 50/50. Extra musicians were drafted to complete the project; Jon Blanchard entered to play the drums, and Bethany Chadd recorded some backing vocals. Bill Sellar of TruPeak Audio mastered the album.

On August 22nd, 2016‪,Fiercely Independent Records released Ancient Race of Techno-Voyagers, the new album from elusive analog technicians Thee Koukouvaya, in vinyl and digital formats.

Ancient Race of Techno-Voyagersis the second full-length album from collaborators John O’Hara and Brian Wenckebach, following their debut LP This is the Mythology of Modern Death (Saint Marie Records) and their ambient EP Witches’ Jelly (soundinsilence). Magnet Magazine described This is the Mythology of Modern Death as “dark and claustrophobic electronica,” while Penny Black Music hailed the album as “an atmospheric masterpiece” and Stereo Embers Magazine found themselves “mesmerized, ecstatic, and chilled out down to our very marrow” by “an absolute mind-fuck of seductive electronic imagination.”

The nine electronic experiments on Ancient Race of Techno-Voyagers build on the sound established on that first LP, crafting expansive, cinematic narratives out of dense layers of synthesizer melodies and complex electronic percussion, this time around producing even darker, more esoteric results. Though on the whole moodier in tone than the previous album, Ancient Race of Techno-Voyagersstill expresses a range of emotions, like the anxious jitter of “Limbic Crisis for Sparkle and Foam” and the cathartic longing of “Margaritas by the Pool,” which includes a vocoder performance by Ulrich Schnauss, one of electronic music's most forward-thinking artists.

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About Thee Koukouvaya

Thee Koukouvaya

Thee Koukouvaya is the conceptual aural sister city to Vilandredo, Rethymno, on the island of Crete. The group’s architects, based on the East Coast, approach post-rock inflected techno, ambient, and IDM with an eye for depth and structure, assembling crystalline lattices of meticulously programmed drum patterns, frenetically sequenced analog synthesizer rhythms, and luxuriant glacial drones.

Both ominous and celebratory, Thee Koukouvaya engineers inhuman otherworldliness steeped in sci-fi paranoia. The result is a deliberately damaged music, generating a sonic liminal space between the organic and the mechanical.